The extremist group has been linked to hate speech and vandalism, but never a major terrorist attack.
Even for experts on terrorist organizations, National Thowheeth Jamaath is far from a household name.
“We know very, very little about them,” said Ajai Sahni, who runs the South Asia Terrorism Portal, which tracks extremist groups in the region. “Other than the fact they are a fundamentalist Islamist organization, they have no background, in my mind, in terrorism.”
Sri Lanka’s government on Monday blamed the obscure group for a coordinated series of suicide bombings at churches and five-star hotels on Easter Sunday that killed at least 290 people.
Officials said they were investigating whether the group had help from international terrorist networks. No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks.
If National Thowheeth Jamaath is proved to be involved, it would be a huge leap for an organization that had been associated primarily with hate speech and defacing icons of Buddhism, the island nation’s predominant religion.
The group is believed to be an offshoot of another organization, Sri Lanka Thowheeth Jamaath, whose members first came into public view in 2013 when they were charged with inciting religious hatred for a video that described Buddha as a carnivore and ridiculed the faith.
Six members were arrested on charges of blasphemy, but later apologized and were eventually released.
